Protecting livelihoods and fighting malnutrition through early warning and anticipatory humanitarian action – discussing drivers of predictable humanitarian crises from drought to conflict (English)

In her current function as Regional Forecast-based Financing Delegate in southern Africa, Anna Lena Huhn supports Red Cross National Societies and governmental partners in the design and rollout of mechanisms for anticipatory actions prior to floods, cyclones, droughts and cold waves in Namibia, Lesotho and Mozambique. She is the co-chair of the regional technical working group on anticipatory action and chair of the inter-agency drought trigger development working group in southern Africa. As independent consultant, she has previously advised IGOs and INGOs on disaster preparedness, early warning early action, DRR and emergency response coordination with a focus on small island developing states and lusophone countries. 

Dr. David Backer served as cross-disciplinary lead on the Modelling Early Risk Indicators to Anticipate Malnutrition (MERIAM) research project from its inception in February 2017 to completion in March 2021. In this capacity, he oversaw the statistical modelling and other related activities (data landscaping, review of state of the art, validation of existing early warning) undertaken by teams at the University of Maryland and the University of Minnesota. He co-authored foundational articles based on the research that were published recently in Food Security, Global Food Security, Data in Brief, and The Lancet Planetary Health, with further articles about the analysis forthcoming. Dr. Backer is currently Associate Director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) and a Research Professor in the Department of Government & Politics at the University of Maryland. In addition, he is a periodic Visiting Professor in the Department of International Relations & Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. His expertise is basic and applied research on the causes, dynamics, consequences and responses to conflict and associated issues of international and human security.  

Erwann FILLOL is the technical responsible of the pastoral early warning system used by ACF over west Sahel since 2007. Erwann Fillol is an expert in remote sensing and geographic information system. With a background in physical science, he holds a MSc degree in climatology from Grenoble University and a PhD degree in remote sensing from Sherbrooke University in Canada. After a postdoctoral position at INRA of Avignon he was involved in developing Action Against Hunger ACF’s early warning system using real time remote sensing data.